Abstract
Those familiar with Tony Walter’s work know it to be, at times, iconoclastic but always original and stimulating. They will not be disappointed in Death in the Modern World. Walter—a sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Death Studies—has written a fascinating account of the ways that modernity has challenged the death systems of modern societies. Yet, Walter explores both the ways that modernity creates some degree of homogeneity in the ways that advanced industrial societies encounter death while also recognizing the unique factors that support heterogeneity—variables that allow each death system’s uniqueness.
As Walter notes, even the table of contents heralds the book’s distinct approach. Rather than chapters focusing on funerals or dying but rather Death in the Modern World is divided into five parts—modernity, risk, culture, nation, and globalization. Walter sees globalization and modernity as factors that bring death systems closer while nation, culture, and risk engender differences in the ways that death and loss are handled within each society.
One of the great strengths of Death in the Modern World is that Walter is extremely sensitive to differences within society—especially those related to class, race, and ethnicity. For example, Walter notes that in the United States, the Death Awareness Movement has focused on the development of hospice so that dying persons—primarily older—can have a humane death while paying little attention to other movements such as Black Lives Matter—a movement concerned with the death of Black adolescents from police violence.
There are other strengths as well that make Death in the Modern World a useful pedagogical tool. It is written clearly and each chapter ends with provocative questions to arouse even the most reticent reader. It adds a distinctly sociological perspective to a field—at least in the United States (less so in the United Kingdom)—dominated by psychological and individualistic models.
Death in the Modern World would make a Death in the modern world text for a sociology of death class. However, this provocative work should be read by anyone interested in the ways that social forces shape a society’s approach to and understanding of death.